On a day raw enough to flake away at the knuckles and the enthusiasm, Sarah
Taylor’s little bombshell that she was in talks with Sussex about playing
for their second XI was ridiculously thrilling.

Taylor is perhaps the greatest female cricketer England have ever had. She is an agile, tenacious, thrifty wicketkeeper, with the quick hands beloved of the game’s romantic tradition.

She is equally breathtaking with the bat, her cover drives strokes of loveliness, her strength through the off side, more unusual in the women’s game, picked up on by Mike Selvey among others.

She is a natural sportswoman – tennis, football, cricket – and kept the male wicketkeeper out of the team when she was at school at Brighton College, where Matthew Prior also went. The two have practised together at Hove.

She has played for England since she was 17, has won the World Cup, the Twenty20 World Cup and the Ashes.

She has even had time for a break from cricket to consider her options. And if she were to play for Sussex second XI this season – and the talks are only informal – she would be the first woman to play for a first-class county. She is but 23.

It is unfortunate but true that women’s sport is still judged against men’s, rather than on its own merit.

This applies particularly to team sports such as football and cricket, where women are only just contemplating semi-professionalism.

So Taylor’s news is important for young girls everywhere who love exercise. It gives them something crucial: ammunition.

Down in the primary-school playground, little boys still dominate the available space.

A football game is hard to contain – it swings and morphs and takes over most of the area unless very strictly controlled.

Younger boys and girls tend to play together at breaktime, but by age eight or nine most girls, except the most hard-skinned, tenacious or talented, are barged out of the way.

They get the corners of the yard – to skip or chat or play make-believe games – but not the space to charge around and get the exercise that gears up little growing bodies for learning or good health.

“You’re only a girl’’ or “girls can’t play” is something that comes out of the mouth of even the most liberally brought-up little boy at his weaker moments.

Girls need little pockets of strength in these situations, something to throw back at doubters, something to help them hold their own.

As a country we need them to be able to do that, we have to get more young girls and women taking regular exercise.

Role models are unbelievably valuable for children.

All those blue-tac marks on a wall, all those posters ripped out of Match, they are a way of looking at how the world operates – working out the possibilities, the choices.

It can be something as parochial as the girl from the street being picked for an age-group swimming squad or something as spectacular as the British cycling team’s performance at the Olympic Games.

It all makes a difference. Even as adults we can be drawn in: since London 2012 200,000 more of us are cycling once a week than we did in 2011.

Women’s cricket has been well supported over the past decade by Sky and the England and Wales Cricket Board; and it has changed dramatically in the past 20 years.

Gone are the white knee-high socks, the culottes, the England badges sewn on to the bought blazers by dutiful, unpaid players.

Going, albeit a little more slowly, are the condescending attitudes: Belinda Clark was chosen as the Wisden Australia Cricketer of the Year as early as 1998; Claire Taylor was a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in this country in 2009.

There have been great female cricketers before Sarah Taylor. Her captain Charlotte Edwards, the Australian fast bowler Cathryn Fitzpatrick, the powerful Karen Rolton, Claire Taylor and Clarke… the list goes on.

Most had to fight harder for recognition than Taylor and her contemporaries. But it is Taylor’s time now. She has first to conquer the Women’s World Cup which starts this month.

Then in the spring she moves to Walmley cricket club in the Birmingham and District League.

Only then, and only maybe, will come Sussex. She will have to contemplate a bigger cricket ball, faster bowlers, longer games and opponents who are pretty keen to get her out. It will be difficult.

She may fail. But the prize is something so exciting for her and so inspirational to little girls who love cricket, and want to play, everywhere.